5:30PM for 6PM start
Please join us to celebrate the launch of The Secret of Emu Field: Britain's Forgotten Atomic Tests in Australia, by Associate Professor Elizabeth Tynan from the JCU Graduate Research School, published by NewSouth, an imprint of UNSW Press.
Liz Tynan will appear in conversation with Associate Professor Paul Frederick Brown, from the UNSW School of Arts, Design and Architecture.
Emu Field is overshadowed by Maralinga, the larger and much more prominent British atomic test site about 193 kilometres to the south. But Emu Field has its own secrets, and the fact that it was largely forgotten makes it more intriguing. Elizabeth Tynan, the award-winning author of Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga Story, reveals the story of a cataclysmic collision between an ancient Aboriginal land and the post-war Britain of Winston Churchill.
Copies of the book will be available to buy on the night, and there will be an author signing. Or you can buy the book online through the UNSW Bookshop here.
'A must-read to understand a cold war history, an arrogant officialdom and an unfathomable desecration of Aboriginal land.' — Larissa Behrendt
'This important book brings back from the far edges of living memory the extraordinary story of Britain's atomic bomb tests in Australia.' — Henry Reynolds
'Tynan's razor-sharp prose and forensic level historical research ensure that Emu Field will be remembered alongside Maralinga as sites of treachery, suffering, and anxiety on the long road towards healing.' — Lynette Russell
'Fastidiously researched and brimming with detail.' — Books+Publishing
Elizabeth Tynan is a former science journalist whose book Atomic Thunder: The Maralinga Story won the Prime Minister’s History Award and the CHASS Australia Book Prize in 2017.
Associate Professor Paul Brown is an educationalist, researcher, community artist and creative producer. Paul is the author of the documentary film Sixty Thousand Barrels, and of the verbatim play Half a Life, which documents the experience of veterans who served at the British Nuclear Testing ground at Maralinga.
